giving up the ghost (but not the fight)
by TolkienGirl
Summary: He lost Loki to the stars once. It crushed him, then, because he did not know any better. [Thor and Loki, from the beginning to the end. Infinity War spoilers, and also spoilers for every single Thor movie Avengers.]


He lost Loki to the stars once.

It crushed him, then, because he did not know any better.

* * *

"You should not stand so close to the edge!"

"Ah," Loki laughed, tipping his head back so that the pale line of his throat was stark against the darkness, "What would Father say? His golden lion, _whimpering_?"

They were children, still. The shimmering bridge was under their feet—under _Thor's_ feet, at least. That was the trouble.

The soft leather soles of Loki's boots curled and rocked over its sharp edge.

Thor could not even bring himself to think of the fall.

"Stars below and stars above," Loki murmured, half to himself. Thor was still sputtering about for a retort. "If we jumped, brother, perhaps we would fly back up again. Perhaps it is too far to be a fall."

"If you pushed me, you mean," Thor grumbled. He _had_ whimpered, and hated himself for it. Loki was supposed to be the cautious one. Grave-eyed and always reading. That was what the people thought of him. They didn't know of his tricks. His laughter and the knives in his hands.

Thor hadn't forgotten about the snake.

"Push you?"

And there it was, another trick. Loki was so good at looking hurt.

"Back to the palace," Thor said. He spoke few words so that he would not stumble over them. "I'm hungry."

"There's the lion," Loki drawled. It was a mockery, but Thor could not tell if it was fond.

* * *

He lost Loki again in a far-off world, gone gray and still in his hands.

 _Trust my rage_.

To Thor's mind, to Thor's _heart_ , rage is just another word for grief.

* * *

He loses Loki many times over, and every time Thor feels so, so certain that it is the end. That he cannot bring his brother back from the wild words of a madman who wants to rule. That he cannot unchain Loki's mind from its own torment. That he can hold on, hold on, but he cannot stop his brother from letting go.

* * *

"You're a murderer," Thor growls, the first time he visits his brother in captivity. Odin's anger is simmering in every corner of Asgard. Frigga is keeping her own counsel.

Loki looks unaffected, but he also does not look real.

"How limited," he answers, with that terrible little smile, the one of reckless nobility, playing round the corners of his mouth. "A murderer? Brother mine-or-not-mine, I am so much more than that."

* * *

Maybe Thor would have wanted to be king if he had not known it was always his for the taking.

No, not even the taking. It would simply be his.

(He thinks this before he knows any better. That is the way of time and space, when you are called god and king from your cradle.)

* * *

Death makes people small.

He can feel his mother burn and his father wither, can feel the loss of every Asgardian life weighted like so many stones around his neck.

 _His for the taking_.

Death is not simple. Thor is beginning to think that _he_ is. Perhaps that is why he always feels Loki's loss so keenly, so permanently, and yet still believes that he will come back.

* * *

He tries to let Loki go. These could be Loki's people, on this misfit planet. His brother is not so cruel as he once wanted to be. _There_ is nobility, tangled in that unquenched recklessness. _There_ is longing that goes beyond all that which Loki keeps quiet and cold.

Thor tells his brother to stay, but it comes out all wrong.

Loki is still so good at looking hurt.

* * *

Thanos demands the Tesseract.

Thor denies, and denies, and—

—of course.

* * *

Thor has lost Loki so many times, in so many realms, to so many vices, that the shock is this: finding him. Finding him in the folly of a promise: _the sun will shine on us again_. Finding him in what shines in those bright eyes.

 _Love_ , he realizes, too late. It is no trick; not this time.

Thor begs with all the might of his heart—he has no hand to hold out.

Not that it matters:

Loki has already let him go.


End file.
